Chapter Eight

The next morning new clouds rolled in. The perfect statement, Mel thought, as she kept busy refilling coffee mugs for Thom and tea for Chandra, who ate their breakfast in shocked, numb silence. Mindy’s grief-stricken roommate stayed in her cabin.

Last night’s heated debate with Deputy Marks about the odds against two people staying in the same small B&B in a tiny Southern California town turning up dead within a day of each other being a coincidence kept replaying in Mel’s head. He accused her of watching too many Murder She Wrote reruns, claiming this isn’t Cabot Cove where murder occurred on a weekly basis.

On the upside, he also told her the roads at the bottom of the mountain were still in terrible shape, and with today’s snowfall it would only get worse. No matter how much the surviving yoga retreaters wanted to go home, they were stuck here at least another night. That gave her a little over twenty-four hours to find the potential killer before they could escape.

Marks’ principal argument was the victims were completely unconnected. Mel didn’t buy it. Something had to tie them together, but she needed more information to prove it. Since Hubbard checked in alone, it made sense to focus on Mindy by talking to her friends. She also wanted a look at the hiking trail on Butte’s Pass Marks claimed she fell from. The falling snow would keep the yoga teachers in town until tomorrow, but it would also soon cover up any footprints or broken branches where she fell. Which meant going to the scene of the accident first was the logical thing to do. As long as she ignored the roaring in her ears at the thought of being on a mountain hiking trail.

“Hey, do you mind finishing up with the breakfast service?” she asked Stacy as she pulled her apron over her head. “I have an errand I need to run.”

“Sure, boss, whatever you need.”

Mel grabbed her borrowed coat and dashed out to the top step of the Babbling Brook’s front porch but found her feet wouldn’t go any farther. Vertigo grabbed hold of her for no reason, and if her outstretched hand hadn’t met the solid wood railing, she might have pitched face forward in the gravel parking lot. Really? Now two feet of stairs made her woozy? Or was it the mere thought of hiking on a mountainous trail?

Still clutching the porch, she rationalized Marks might be right. There was no reasonable evidence connecting the two victims other than Hubbard creeped Mindy out. If that’s all it took, he would have probably been murdered years ago. What was her case? That someone killed Hubbard and then killed Mindy? What motive would anyone have? Unless their deaths somehow benefitted someone, it could be the astronomically impossible coincidence Marks claimed.

The more she thought about it, the more Mel convinced herself it would be smarter to talk to Mindy’s friends first and find if anything linked her to Hubbard. Because if not, then she didn’t need to investigate the trail. Resolved in her new purpose, Mel avoided the dizzying stairs and headed toward Cabin Two and Keiko.

****

Ten minutes later Mel warmed herself in front of the little cast-iron stove in Keiko and Mindy’s cabin.

The young woman sniffled, her eyes already red and her nose chafed from blowing it. “I hope it’s okay I lit a fire. You mountain folks are used to the cold, but this is freezing for me.”

“Of course it’s okay. I’ll let you in on a little secret.” Mel rubbed her hands. “I just moved here from LA myself. I agree with you about the cold.”

“Really?” Keiko’s eyes widened. “Why would you leave LA for this one-horse town?”

“It’s a long story.” Mel had run out of ways to not answer, but ignoring it seemed to work the best. The pile of clothes half-hanging out of drawers on their way to a suitcase was as good a distraction as any. “Are you packing already?”

“Oh no, these are Mindy’s things. I figured someone should take care of them.” Keiko choked on a sob as she returned to carefully folding expensive items with designer labels even Mel recognized. Mindy certainly had money from somewhere.

“How long had you and Mindy been friends?”

Keiko shrugged, fighting back her tears. “I moved there about a year and a half ago with the usual crazy dreams of being an actress like everyone else. We met at the Nickel Diner, and it was like karma, we’d been friends ever since.”

Mel thought she probably meant kismet, not karma, but the poor kid had already been through enough, she didn’t need a vocabulary lesson to boot.

“Mindy took me in, helped me get my yoga teaching certificate and a job at Chandra’s studio.” Keiko pulled an expensive sweater out of the drawer, and a pair of tourmaline earrings clunked to the wood floor. Keiko’s gaze shot to Mel, her eyes wide as saucers. “Oh, my gosh! Please don’t tell anyone else about the earrings.”

Mel grabbed the earrings, certain they were the ones Chandra lost. “Did Mindy steal these?”

Keiko trudged to the desk drawer and pulled out a creamer mug that had gone missing from the tables yesterday morning after breakfast and handed it over. “It’s a disease she’s been going to therapy to try to stop.”

She plopped down on her own bed, shook her head, and sighed. “Mindy was no saint, but you have to understand the way she grew up forced her to be, I don’t know, hardened I guess, to survive. But I wasn’t the only one she helped. If she saw a person in need, she’d always reach out. She couldn’t always do anything, but she let you know she heard you. Like inviting me on this retreat—she paid for the cabin herself, wouldn’t take any money from me.”

Something had been bugging Mel since they all checked in, but now it seemed more relevant than ever. “Why did you guys come up here for your retreat, anyway? Usually people go to places like Vegas or Hawaii for a business retreat. Especially at this time of year.”

Keiko laughed as she dabbed at her eyes. “Okay, that was classic Mindy. These guys have had this group for a few years where they all take Christmas off and go to the Mexican Riviera. This year was the first time they invited her, so she volunteered to make all the arrangements. No one knew they weren’t getting on a cruise until it was too late to book the trip.”

“But why? Why here?”

“Last summer Mindy came here on a camping trip with the boyfriend of the moment and fell for some local she couldn’t stop talking about.”

Mel’s ears pricked. Now there’s a motive. “Do you know his name?”

Keiko shook her head, gnawing on the cuticle of her thumb. “She never told me his name. Mindy pointed him out the day we drove in, but I only caught a glimpse of him from behind. Curly dark hair, slim build, but that’s all I remember. I didn’t get a good look.” Tears and snot started to flow again. “She was going to introduce me to him before we left, she just never got a chance to, and now…” Her slender shoulders shook as she sobbed.

Mel snatched a tissue from the box on the desk when she saw a faded picture of a man and a young girl. Judging by the clothing styles, it had to be more than ten years old. But the man was definitely Darren Hubbard. On the back the faded ink read, “Dad, 2008”.

Stunned, Mel sank down on the bed next to Keiko. The girl might be Mindy, but she was too little to be sure. “Is this Mindy with Mr. Hubbard?”

Keiko shrugged, a move Mel began to hate. “Beats me, I’ve never seen that picture before, but the way she confronted him in the lobby it sure seemed like they recognized each other.”

“What did they argue about?”

“Something about a promise he broke, I think?”

A sinking pit opened in Mel’s stomach. Her gut feeling had been right, they were connected. Which meant she couldn’t avoid going to the hiking trail where Mindy fell any longer.

But why did it have to be a cliff?